Defense Ministers

"At Easter 1934 we paid a visit to Rome, where I had an interview with the Duce. I was favourably impressed. There were no histrionics, nor was I obliged, as I had been told would happen, to walk the length of a long room from the door to his desk. He met me at the door and accompanied me to it when I left. We agreed on the importance of rearmament and he laughed when I said that the idea that armaments produced war was as foolish as to think that umbrellas produced rain. Because he laughed at my joke I thought he had a sense of humour and was quite prepared to imagine he had other good qualities. It is too early to pronounce a final verdict upon Mussolini. The more I read about him, especially in the pages of Ciano, the less I like him, but no trustworthy biography has yet been written, so that it is wiser to withhold judgment. He is not, like Hitler, condemned out of his own mouth, nor by the notoriety and magnitude of his evil deeds. It may be that he began well and meant well, like so many of the Caesars before him, but that he ended ill as they did owing to the corruption of power."

"What a man! I have lost my heart!... Fascism has rendered a service to the entire world... If I were Italian, I am sure I would have been with you entirely from the beginning of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passion of Leninism."

"[One of the] leading statesmen in the world."

"A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve."

"The methods of the Duce are not by any means American methods...[but] methods which would certainly not appeal to this country might easily appeal to a people so differently constituted as are the Italians"

"Los Hitler, los Mussolini.../¡Balas! ¡Balas! ¡Balas! ¡Balas!/Las dos víboras de Europa/que con la muerte se pactan."

"As the elections were being held, he published in Gerarchla a disquisition on Machiavelli. He had, he remarked, just re-read the Florentine writer's corpus, although, he added modestly, he had not fully plumbed the secondary literature in Italy and abroad. Machiavelli's thought was, Mussolini announced, more alive now than ever. His pessimism about human nature was eternal in its acuity. Individuals simply could not be relied on voluntarily to 'obey the law, pay their taxes and serve in war'. No well-ordered society could want the people to be sovereign. Machiavelli’s cynical acumen exposed the fatuity of the dreams of the Enlightenment (and of Mussolini’s own political philosophy before 1914)."

"Which European politician of the first half of the twentieth century could be relied on to read the philosophical and literary works of his co-nationals and send their authors notes of criticism and congratulation? Who, at the time of profound crisis and despite his evident ill health, kept on his desk a copy of the works of Socrates and Plato, annotated in his own hand? Who declared publicly that he loved trees and anxiously quizzed his bureaucracy about storm damage to the environment? Who, in his table talk while he was entrenched in power, was fascinated by the task of tracing his intellectual antecedents?... Who seemed almost always ready to grant an interview and, having done so, was especially pleased by the prospect of talking about contemporary political and philosophical ideas? Who left more than 44 volumes of his collected works? Who claimed with an element of truth that money never dirtied his hands? Who could conduct a conversation in three languages apart from his own?... The somewhat surprising answer to all these questions is Benito Mussolini, Duce of Italian Fascism and dictator of Italy from 1922 (or 1925) to 1945 (or 1943)."

"Long live Mussolini! Long live socialism!"

"Mussolini was the son of a blacksmith, Hitler was the son of a house painter and I am the son of a miller."

"Stalin will never make socialism; rather Mussolini will."

"Obviously the government of [Mussolini's] time, out of fear that German power might lead to complete victory, preferred to ally itself with Hitler's Germany rather than opposing it … The racial laws were the worst fault of Mussolini as a leader, who in so many other ways did well."

"He never killed anyone, he sent people on holiday to confine them."

"If I advance; follow me! If I retreat; kill me! If I die; avenge me!"

"The best blood will at some time get into a fool or a mosquito."

"It may be expected that this will be a century of authority, a century of the Left, a century of Fascism."

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."

"Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day."

"For my part I prefer fifty thousand rifles to five million votes."

"I bequeath the republic to the republicans and not to the monarchists, and the work of social reform to the socialist and not to the middle class."

"I am making superhuman efforts to educate this people. When they have learnt to obey, they will believe what I tell them."

"Fortunately the Italian people has not yet accustomed itself to eat many times a day, and possessing a modest level of living, it feels deficiency and suffering less."

"The struggle between the two worlds [Fascism and Democracy] can permit no compromises. The new cycle which begins with the ninth year of the Fascist regime places the alternative in even greater relief — either we or they, either their ideas or ours, either our State or theirs!"

"Believe, obey, fight."

"The Socialists ask what is our program? Our program is to smash the heads of the Socialists."

"Men do not move mountains; it is only necessary to create the illusion that mountains move."

"With the unleashing of a mighty clash of peoples, the bourgeoisie is playing its last card and calls forth on the world scene that which Karl Marx called the sixth great power: the socialist revolution."

"The outbreak of a socialist revolution in one country will cause the others to imitate it or so to strengthen the proletariat as to prevent its national bourgeoisie from attempting any armed intervention."

"The socialist revolution was a pure and simple question of ‘force.’… Between the [bourgeoisie and the proletariat] no accord is possible. One must disappear. The weaker will be ‘eliminated.’ The class struggle is therefore a question of ‘force.’"

"In the whole negative part, we are alike. We and the Russians are against liberals, against democrats, against parliament."

"[Marx was] the magnificent philosopher of working class violence."

"I owe most to Georges Sorel. This master of syndicalism by his rough theories of revolutionary tactics has contributed most to form the discipline, energy and power of the fascist cohorts."

"You want to know what fascism is like? It is like your New Deal!"

"Shoot me in the chest."

"For this I have been and am a socialist. The accusation of inconsistency has no foundation. My conduct has always been straight in the sense of looking at the substance of things and not to the form. I adapted socialisticamente to reality. As the evolution of society belied many of the prophecies of Marx, the true socialism folded from possible to probable. The only feasible socialism socialisticamente is corporatism, confluence, balance and justice interests compared to the collective interest."

"We are fighting to impose a higher social justice. The others are fighting to maintain the privileges of caste and class. We are proletarian nations that rise up against the plutocrats."

"Some still ask of us: what do you want? We answer with three words that summon up our entire program. Here they are…Italy, Republic, Socialization. . .Socialization is no other than the implantation of Italian Socialism…"

"Better to live a day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep."

"War is the normal state of the people."

"When the war is over, in the world's social revolution that will be followed by a more equitable distribution of the earth's riches, due account must be kept of the sacrifices and of the discipline maintained by the Italian workers. The Fascist revolution will make another decisive step to shorten social distances."

"We go to battle against the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the west… This gigantic struggle is nothing other than a phase in the logical development of our revolution; it is the struggle of peoples that are poor but rich in workers against the exploiters who hold on ferociously to the monopoly off all the riches and all the gold of the earth…"

"The watchword is only one, categorical and challenging for everyone. It already flies across and lights the hearts from the Alps to the Indian Ocean: Winning! And we will win, in order to finally give a long period of peace with justice to Italy, to Europe, to the world. **From the declaration of war's announce, 10 June 1940"

"It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do."

"War is to man what motherhood is to a woman. From a philosophical and doctrinal viewpoint, I do not believe in perpetual peace."

"The shout of your legitimate exultation merges with the shout rising from all the cities of Spain now wholly free from the Reds’ infamy, and with the shout of the anti-Bolsheviks from all over the world. The bright victory of Barcelona is another chapter in the history of the new Europe we are creating. Franco’s magnificent troops and our intrepid legionnaires did not defeat only Negrín’s government. Many others among our enemies are biting the dust right now. The Reds’ watchword was ‘No pasarán’, but we passed and, I am telling you, we will pass."

"These men are not made of the same stuff as the Francis Drakes and the other magnificent adventurers who created the empire. These, after all, are the tired sons of a long line of rich men, and they will lose their empire."

"No one knows better than I with forty years' political experience that policy--particularly a revolutionary policy--has its tactical requirements. I recognised the Soviets in 1924. In 1934, I signed with them a treaty of commerce and friendship. I, therefore, understood that, especially as Ribbentrop's forecast about the non-intervention of Britain and France has not come off, you are obliged to avoid the second front [with Russia]. You have had to pay for this in that Russia has, without striking a blow, been the great profiteer of the war in Poland and the Baltic. But I, who was born a revolutionary and have not modified my revolutionary mentality, tell you that you cannot permanently sacrifice the principles of your revolution to the tactical requirements of a given moment... I have also the definite duty to add that a further step in the relations with Moscow would have catastrophic repercussions in Italy, where the unanimity of anti-Bolshevik feeling is absolute, granite-hard, and unbreakable. Permit me to think that this will not happen. The solution of your Lebensraum is in Russia, and nowhere else... The day when we shall have demolished Bolshevism we shall have kept faith with both our revolutions. Then it will be the turn of the great democracies, who will not be able to survive the cancer which gnaws them..."

"World Jewry has been, for sixteen years, despite our policy, an irreconcilable enemy of Fascism. In Italy our policy has led, in the Semitic elements, to what can today be called a true rush to board the ship."

"With regard to domestic policy, the current burning issue is the racial question. Also in this field we will adopt the necessary solutions. Those who believe that we have obediently imitated anyone, or worse, acted on suggestions, are poor fools toward whom we do not know if we should direct our contempt or our pity. The racial problem did not suddenly burst out of nowhere, as those who are accustomed to brusque awakenings think — since they are used to long armchair naps. It is in relation to imperial conquest; because history teaches us that empires are conquered by arms but are held by prestige. And for prestige it is necessary to have a clear, severe racial consciousness, that establishes not only the differences, but also very clear superiorities."

"This is the epitaph I want on my tomb: "Here lies one of the most intelligent animals who ever appeared on the face of the Earth.""